Skip to main content
Main

Stuffed Tomatoes

Tomatoes filled with a mixture of pulp, buttered cracker crumbs, salt, pepper, sugar, onion juice, and topped with buttered bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Stuffed Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Cut a thin slice from the stem end of the tomatoes.

  2. Remove the seeds and soft pulp.

Make the filling

  1. Mix the pulp with an equal amount of buttered cracker crumbs.

  2. Season the mixture with salt, pepper, sugar, and onion juice.

  3. Fill the tomato cavities with the mixture, heaping it in the center.

  4. Sprinkle buttered bread crumbs over the top.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the tomatoes in a baking dish and bake at 400°F (200°C) until the crumbs are brown.

  2. Serve hot.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Large smooth tomatoes
Hold the filling and soften into a juicy base as they bake.
Buttered cracker crumbs
Bind with the pulp and absorb moisture to give the filling body.
Buttered bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned topping as the butter toasts in the oven.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the tomato's natural acidity.

The step that matters

Bake until the crumbs are brown. Baking at 400°F must brown the buttered topping without overcooking the tomatoes, which can collapse and release too much liquid if left too long.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, pepper, sugar, bread):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Eggplantfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, sugar, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More stuffed tomatoes recipes

Baked 22Shrimp 6Cheese 4with Mushrooms 4Celery 3Cucumber 3 See all 305 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes